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The Intercept 

When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for a vote on a war powers resolution that would block U.S. support for the Saudi-led war effort in Yemen, the Biden administration immediately pushed back. The resolution, the White House warned, would upset diplomatic efforts and bring about the war it was trying to end.

“The Administration strongly opposes the Yemen War Powers Resolution on a number of grounds, but the bottom line is that this resolution is unnecessary and would greatly complicate the intense and ongoing diplomacy to truly bring an end to the conflict,” read White House talking points circulated privately. “In 2019, diplomacy was absent and the war was raging. That is not the case now. Thanks to our diplomacy which remains ongoing and delicate, the violence over nearly nine months has effectively stopped.”

The White House’s claims that its diplomacy is working, however, are undercut by its own political moves and the reality on the ground. President Joe Biden’s envoy for the conflict has consistently sided with the Saudi coalition against the Houthi movement that controls much of the country. And though a ceasefire during the spring and summer provided a respite in civilian casualties due to bombings, the ongoing Saudi blockade and economic warfare against Yemenis perpetuates the humanitarian crisis in the country — which the United Nations has deemed the worst in the world.

Without taking an even-handed approach to the conflict in search of a political solution and the mitigation of the humanitarian crisis, the Biden administration’s machinations can hardly be considered good-faith efforts at diplomacy, critics of U.S. policy in the conflict said.

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever,” Jamal Benomar, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen until 2015, told The Intercept. “There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them. So an all-out war can resume at any time.”

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever. There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them.”

The divisions in Yemen — with the Saudi coalition controlling southern oil fields and ports, and the Houthi-led government controlling territory in the north that houses some 80 percent of the country’s 30 million residents — are only growing more entrenched. Instead of asking concessions of its allies in the Saudi coalition, the administration’s one-sidedness has contributed to the breakdown of diplomacy.

Though violence has not returned to earlier levels since the expiration of the ceasefire in October, fighting continues along some of the war’s frontlines. The Houthis have warned that their restraint won’t last long amid the current impasse and continued blockade of fuel imports; if the embargo is not eased, they said, they will reciprocally blockade a nearby waterway crucial to the global oil markets. The situation is only growing more explosive.

“There’s been a lull in the fighting, but since there was no concerted effort to move the political process forward, the lull is a temporary one and all sides are preparing for the worst,” said Benomar. “The situation is extremely fragile because Yemen has fragmented now and you have different areas of Yemen under the control of different warlords.”

Truce

The largely diplomatic push cited by the White House in opposing the Sanders war powers resolution — a so-far ineffective push that gives Saudi Arabia room to maneuver — follows a pattern it has held since early in the administration, when Biden pledged to work toward ending “offensive operations” to the Yemen war, and Saudi Arabia engaged in its most aggressive bombing campaign under the rubric of “defensive operations.”

Under such conditions, progress toward a treaty has remained elusive. While the Houthi movement has steadily gained territory — and political support in the country — the Saudi-backed government and other allied militia groups maintained control of oil-rich areas and ports in the south, enabling the punishing blockade. Biden balked at calls to pressure Saudi into easing the blockade when it sparked the worst fuel crisis in Yemeni history. Instead, when administration officials have commented, they have avoided naming the Saudis, calling instead on “all parties” to allow unhindered import of fuel.

As the blockade continued and the fuel crisis worsened, the Houthis attacked the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in late January 2022 in two separate attacks, with one reaching a U.S. military base. In March, the Houthis targeted a storage site belonging to the Saudi national oil company, marking the second boldest attack against Saudi oil facilities. Instead of convincing the Saudis to deescalate, the Biden administration pledged to defend Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against what they’ve called the “terrorist” attacks.

Yet the threat to the global oil supply was becoming clear, a risk the White House was uninterested in running amid both a midterm election and a war between Russia and Ukraine. A week after the attack on Saudi’s oil infrastructure, the United Nations, backed by the U.S., managed to have all parties agree on a truce that would allow for talks on a settlement to the yearslong conflict. “The Saudis accepted the truce after belatedly realizing that they were losing in an expensive quagmire,” said Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA analyst and Brookings Institution senior fellow, in an email. “Biden’s team helped get them to that point along with a lot of help from the UN and Oman.”

The two-month truce allowed for a halt to all Saudi airstrikes and ground fighting and an ease on fuel imports to north Yemen, in return for a halt to Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia.

No Renewal

The ceasefire largely held up and kept getting renewed until October 2, when the Houthi government refused to renew it again.

The Houthi government laid blame with Riyadh and the U.S. for avoiding the issue most important to the Houthi-led coalition: monthly salary payments of the state employees. Since 2016, the Saudi-backed government relocated the Central Bank of Yemen to territory it controls, accusing the Houthi government of diverting the bank’s funds to the war effort, a charge international observers and aid groups found baseless. The Saudi-backed government promised to keep the bank’s policy of paying all public servants, estimated at 1 million employees who support around 10 million others, but it broke its word, denying millions of Yemenis their only source of income.

The Houthi-led coalition put the salary payment issue as a condition to renew the deal, but the Saudis agreed only on paying workers in the health and educational sectors. The Houthis maintained that the revenues from oil exports in areas under the Saudi-backed government, which would account for nearly 70 percent of Yemen’s budget, should be allocated for the pay of all public servants. No Biden-led diplomacy — intense, delicate, ongoing, or otherwise — could persuade the Saudis to stop diverting Yemeni public-servant money back to Riyadh.

Little progress has been made on the question of paying public servants. The U.N. Security Council, Britain, the European Union, and the U.S. called the Houthi government demand to pay all public servants “unrealistic” and “maximalist.” During a congressional hearing in December, Biden’s Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking blamed the Houthi government for the current impasse, slamming “the last-minute Houthi demand that the Yemeni Government divert its limited oil export revenues to pay the salaries of active Houthi combatants.”

What the U.S. deemed unrealistic has in fact been a demand of Democrats on Capitol Hill. What Sanaa demanded as a condition to renew the deal wasn’t impossible or even unrealistic. A group of 16 senators — along with many aid groups — called on Biden in May 2021 to end the Saudi blockade. While the Biden administration angled to keep the blockade as leverage in negotiations, the senators said the embargo “must end today and be decoupled from ongoing negotiations.”

For critics, the Biden administration’s stance — considering the payments to Yemeni public servants too great a cost for establishing a new ceasefire — isn’t a serious approach to ending the war.

“These demands benefit ordinary Yemeni workers, not the Sana’a government itself,” said Shireen Al-Adeimi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, referring to the Houthi government in the capital of Sana’a. “What’s ‘unrealistic’ and even cruel, however, is to continue denying millions of public servants their salaries for multiple years and to derail ceasefire negotiations because of a humanitarian, not a political or military, demand.”

Diplomacy to Nowhere

The relative calm in fighting and a halt to bombing witnessed since April has been rare. Its impact on the most vulnerable, however, has been small. Much of the Yemeni suffering has been caused by the blockade and other economic warfare tactics, not the bullets and bombs.

The status quo leaves the Houthis little incentive to maintain a truce that delivers misery to the population it governs without any serious concessions around the blockade or payments to public-service employee payments. In return, the Houthi government has offered to cease its bombings of Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners. Saudi, emboldened by White House support, agreed on only easing restrictions on fuel imports.

Late last month, Omani negotiators were back in northern Yemen, urging the Houthis to sit down with the Saudis to discuss both issues. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the Houthi movement’s leader and the one calling the shots, rejected the offer as another Saudi bid to evade addressing the economic crisis first, which he and his aides stressed should be decoupled from any other issues being negotiated. The Houthi message was simple, according to a source briefed on the talks: Pay the salaries of all public servants, lift the blockade on the northern port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport, and then the parties can sit together to negotiate other terms.

The Saudis and the Emirates, however, seem unlikely to budge. So far, they have only granted concessions in the face of violence directed at Abu Dhabi and at Saudi oil fields, not through Biden-led negotiations.

That may be the dynamic at the heart of the White House’s opposition to the Sanders war powers resolution: Without U.S. support for its warplanes, the Saudis would be effectively grounded, perhaps emboldening the Houthis, who are poised to relaunch strikes and send global oil markets spinning to win an end to the blockade. So far, Houthi attacks intended as warnings have dissuaded tanker captains from offloading millions of barrels of crude oil that would have otherwise benefited the Saudi-backed government.

Facing the reality of the Houthis escalating their attacks, the Biden administration could dig in and refuse to meet reasonable Houthi demands while fending off congressional opposition to the war. Or the White House could pressure the Saudis into a genuine end to the war. In fighting the Sanders resolution, the White House has chosen to dig in. The Biden administration diplomacy is “ongoing,” but it’s not clear it’s going anywhere — making a resurgence of violence now seem inevitable.

The post Biden’s “Diplomacy” in Yemen Means Taking Saudi Arabia’s Side — and Could Spark All-Out War appeared first on The Intercept.

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Just In | The Hill 

Former President Trump is already in the race. Other major contenders are openly contemplating bids. And speculation is swirling around big names who have so far kept their intentions quiet, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The battle for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination is guaranteed to be fierce. President Biden may have had a better midterms than many people expected, but his approval ratings remain tepid. 

Biden is vulnerable if he runs for a second term. If he doesn’t, there would be no runaway favorite to be the Democratic nominee. 

Either way, the GOP nominee in 2024 looks sure to have a solid chance of winning the White House.

Here are the people most likely to top the GOP ticket.

1. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 

DeSantis had by far the best midterms of any serious 2024 contender, winning reelection by almost 20 points in Florida, which had been considered a battleground state, at least until recently. 

His victory made a formidable argument that his embrace of culture war issues and his opposition to COVID-19–related lockdowns has paid off electorally.

DeSantis has continued in that vein since his victory, calling on the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to COVID-19 vaccinations.

The move was derided by critics as a blatant play to the anti-vax element of the GOP base. But that won’t bother DeSantis at all.

The Florida governor came off his election campaign with about $90 million still in the bank across his accounts, and he has also drawn some GOP mega-donors to his side.

DeSantis has not provided many clues as to his 2024 intentions; it is simply assumed that he is contemplating a run.

If he gets in, he will have many assets — and some favorable tailwinds created by his main rival’s missteps.

2. Former President Trump

Trump would have been the runaway favorite had these rankings been drawn up the day before the midterm elections.

Since then, virtually everything the president has touched has turned bad.

Some of his most prominent endorsees lost in the midterms. He committed a major unforced blunder when he had dinner with two antisemites, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes.

Trump’s campaign launch was lackluster and was not followed up by any of the big rallies from which the former president seems to draw energy. 

Trump got into yet another seemingly pointless controversy in early December when he called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution — apparently to allow him to either be reinstated or to rerun the 2020 election.

While Trump is diminished, he can’t be at all counted out.

Republican voters retain a strongly positive impression of him, he can raise all the money he needs with ease and he could be a big beneficiary of a multicandidate field given the loyalty of his hardcore followers.

Trump’s allies point out that he is in a better position now than he was at the outset of his 2016 campaign. 

That’s true enough so far as it goes. But the former president looks more vulnerable, even in a Republican primary, than would have been predicted even a short time ago.

3. Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)

Cruz was Trump’s most serious rival in 2016, and he would be a significant player if he entered the race this time. 

He has been careful to keep the door open to that possibility, even though a White House bid would be complicated because he is also up for reelection to the Senate in 2024.

Cruz told reporters at a November news conference, following an appearance before the Republican Jewish Coalition, that he was running for reelection to the upper chamber. But, he added, “there will be plenty of time to discuss 2024 presidential … there will be plenty of time for that.”

Cruz’s appeal would be essentially unchanged from what it was in 2016: a fervent conservative, willing to mix it up with the media and attack Democrats in fiery terms.

DeSantis’s new prominence complicates the calculus significantly for Cruz, since he would have to both maneuver around Trump and prove himself a better alternative than DeSantis.

4. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley

Haley has been among the most candid of the major contenders about her intentions. 

She is mulling a presidential bid, saying at an event at Clemson University at the end of November, “We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is.”

She added: “If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000 percent in, and we’ll finish it.”

Haley served Trump as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and was previously the first female governor of South Carolina. 

Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, would bring a very different sensibility to the top of the GOP ticket than was the case with Trump.

Whether she can win the trust of the party’s base, however, might be another matter.

5. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Pompeo, like Haley, has made no secret at all of the fact that he is contemplating a 2024 campaign.

In December, he told “Fox News Sunday” that he and his family were “thinking our way through this,” adding that “we have to get this right for America.” He suggested he would make a decision by spring.

Pompeo has foreign policy gravitas thanks to his time as the nation’s chief diplomat and, before that, as director of the CIA.

As a Fox News contributor, he also has an enviable platform from which to reach the Republican grassroots.

Bu the question for Pompeo has always been whether there is really a constituency for him, even among the Republican primary electorate. 

It’s seriously questionable whether there are passionate Pompeo backers in any significant number.

6. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin

Youngkin came from relative political obscurity to win the governorship of Virginia in 2021.

The achievement won him instant fans among Republicans, not least because Biden had carried the state by around 10 points just a year before.

Youngkin’s strategy was also seen as offering an appealing template for Republicans nationwide — he neither tethered himself to Trump nor directly repudiated him. Instead, he reaped political dividends from making issues like education and “wokeness” central to his campaign.

A Youngkin presidential bid would be an intriguing one, though his relative lack of political experience would be an issue.

7. Former Vice President Mike Pence

The belief Pence will run for president is so strong that, in late December, reports gained steam that he had filed the necessary paperwork to launch — until a spokesman clarified that the paperwork appeared to be a hoax.

The spokesman, Devin O’Malley, emphasized in a series of tweets that Pence had “been saying that if there was an announcement to be made, it would [be] made in 2023!”

Pence had been putting more distance than before between himself and Trump, especially in a series of interviews he gave to promote his recent memoir. At the same time, he refers with pride to the achievements of the “Trump-Pence administration.”

It seems debatable, at best, whether Pence can thread that needle successfully in a GOP primary.

Several polls show him meeting sizable resistance among Republican voters — presumably from Trump loyalists who blame him for not joining the clearly unconstitutional effort to overturn the 2020 election.

8. Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.)

Scott coasted to election in South Carolina this fall and ended the campaign with more than $20 million still left over, according to OpenSecrets.

The only Black Republican senator, Scott is seen by his backers as one of the best options to unite the pro-Trump and Trump-skeptical wings of the GOP.  

He has criticized the former president on occasion, but never intemperately, and Trump supported his bid for reelection. At the same time, Scott is unimpeachably conservative in his record on everything from gun rights to health care.

Scott has also sought to reach across the aisle on occasion, working with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to try to enact some level of policing reform. The effort ultimately failed.

Scott keeps a close inner circle, and no one outside it seems quite sure if he hankers for the Oval Office. 

Skeptics don’t think the fire burns within him, but intriguing trips to the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire tell a different story.

9. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem 

Noem, plainly on the MAGA wing of the party, could be an appealing choice for some pro-Trump voters, especially if the former president were to falter badly.

Noem has a compelling personal story, outlined in a recent memoir; a record of vigorous opposition to COVID-19–related restrictions; and a taste for the provocative — her staff gifted her a flamethrower as a Christmas present this year.

Noem was also ahead of every other major contender in banning TikTok from state-owned government devices, amid security concerns, recently. Numerous other governors have followed her lead on that issue.

Noem is a gifted communicator, though she would have to get past several bigger names if she were to make a serious run at the nomination.

10. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu

Sununu is one of the leading lights of the more moderate or pro-establishment wing of the GOP. 

He won reelection handily in November, while a more extreme, Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, Don Bolduc, went down to defeat in his state.

Sununu is cut from somewhat similar cloth as other Trump critics who appear to be contemplating bids, including Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

But the bottom line is, it’s doubtful that any of those candidates can win the nomination in a party that has come to be dominated by its more fiery, populist wing.

​Campaign, News, Chris Sununu, Donald Trump, Glenn Youngkin, Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Nikke Haley, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Tim Scott Read More